Your turn — May 27, 2012

Updated 10:08 pm, Saturday, May 26, 2012

San Antonio residents take exception to TNT sports analyst Charles Barkley's unflattering comments about the city.

San Antonio residents take exception to TNT sports analyst Charles Barkley's unflattering comments about the city.

Photo: Turner Sports

Your turn — May 27, 2012

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Saving lives

Re: “Despite changes, more kids are dying,” Sunday, Page A1:

Your article points to the divergence of what we Texans hold dear — keeping our children safe — and what we allow to happen in our names, through lawmakers' budget decisions. There are proven effective programs that literally halve a child's likelihood of suffering child abuse or neglect during his or her lifetime. For each dollar our state puts toward effective prevention like this, we save not only lives and heartache. We also see a return of many more dollars when today's safe children grow up to be tomorrow's healthy and productive adults.

As Sen. Carlos Uresti points out, it's up to all of us to speak up for these children. And the ones we must speak to first are state leaders, who need reminding that we as Texans place no priority before the safety of our children.

Good investigative report by Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje! However, I find it distressful that Ms. Walker from Child Protective Services is so seemingly superficial when it comes to job loss or poverty as a stressor and cause of child abuse/neglect.

As a former CPS worker (11/91-6/95), I saw poverty, racism and a general societal disregard for the situations of these families. For those blessed to have jobs, these parents were for the most part grossly underpaid and mistreated by their employers, issues that are highly volatile in face of the image that City Hall projects.

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When one lives in a dangerous neighborhood, has little if any skills to obtain a decent-paying job and never received an adequate education in one of 17 separate and unequal local school districts, along with the city and state governments slashing needed social services, what do the bureaucrats at CPS expect?

On top of all this, our federal government throws away trillions of precious dollars on unjustified wars along with allowing corporations and the rich to get away with not paying their fair share in federal taxes. The result is both social and economic chaos.

Along with correcting the aforementioned problems, I would suggest offering contraceptives and real sex education classes to young people. Far too many are having children way before they are prepared to do so.

In closing, I would ask why the local DA's office failed to pursue criminal charges on some of the cases cited? Surely, the lives of these children must mean something.

Frank Valdez

The ‘whole truth'

The two lead stories May 20 should be enough to speed the demise of abstinence-only sex education in Texas. It's stunning to read that “Despite changes, more kids are dying. Bexar toll from (child) abuse, neglect sets a record.” How many children of young, ill-equipped parents have to be beaten, drowned or starved before we tell the whole truth about the prevention and the consequences of unwanted births? Certainly not all abused and murdered children in Bexar County come from homes of teen parents, but a significant number do. I'm not talking about abortion. I'm talking about providing the knowledge for young people to prevent unwanted pregnancies and plan for desired ones.

Healthy Futures of Texas, which seeks to “prevent teen and unwanted pregnancies” provides sobering statistics on its website (healthyfuturesTX.org): 71 percent of pregnancies among unmarried young adults in Texas are unplanned, the number for Bexar County alone is 62 percent, and unplanned Medicaid births in Texas cost $1.2 billion annually. The monetary cost is staggering, but the human cost is horrific. The website states, “We envision a community where (1) young people are empowered to make healthy, informed decisions about sex; (2) planned pregnancies are the social norm; (3) all parents are prepared for the challenge of parenthood; and (4) all children are wanted, cherished and cared for in a healthy environment.” Shouldn't those be the goals of all reasonable human beings?

The other disturbing headline was “Community health clinics challenged as poor increase.” Though the story is mostly about the Rio Grande Valley, we know that the numbers of those in poverty are increasing. Shouldn't we provide every opportunity for young people to stay in school to learn a trade or earn a degree to support their families? Those opportunities include a frank, honest discussion about sex and an unbiased discussion of birth control. We continue to teach abstinence-only sex education at our peril and the peril of too many abused and neglected children.

Give us a break. Now, Mr. Charles Barkley, we love our city, and we love the Spurs, our Spurs. We love our river, we love our Fiestas and our many fun places — Fiesta Texas, Sea World and so many others. And, for sure, we love our lovely women, and they love us, too.

You are different. You like big names, and you like credit, hundreds of thousands of dollars in credit.

Oh, you have lost weight, and TNT loves you. And even our own women may kind of love you. But I have a question: Why don't you show off your championship rings the way Shaq does?

With regard to the comments made by Charles Barkley about San Antonio, someone should take him to Fort Sam Houston to visit the wounded warriors so he can see who made it possible for him to be able to use his big mouth to make such sarcastic remarks. Then visit the Witte Museum, the McNay Museum and the Visitors Center at Mission San Jose, so he can see there is more to life than basketball arenas, golf courses and gambling casinos.